From Million-Dollar Banking Career to Revolutionizing Maternity Care: SAINT BELLA Files IPO Prospectus

Visiting the official website of Saint Bella, one is greeted by the seven-character phrase “Loving You Is Like Loving Life,” the title of Wang Xiaobo’s collection of letters to Li Yinhe, in which love burns with fervor and sincerity. Perhaps for Xiang Hua, founder of Hong Kong Beikang International Holdings Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Beikang International”), Saint Bella represents a gift to all women who have fulfilled the noble mission of childbirth.

Saint Bella Maternal and Infant Care Center (hereinafter referred to as “Saint Bella”) is a key component of the maternal and infant industry chain built by Beikang International. Xiang Hua told reporters, “What I aim to do is improve the maternal and infant care industry.”

As national living standards and consumer spending power have risen significantly, traditional childbirth concepts have quietly shifted in the maternal and infant market, now dominated by expectant mothers born in the 1980s and 1990s. The concept of “scientific postpartum confinement” has gained widespread acceptance among new-generation mothers, driving the growing popularity of postpartum care centers that offer evidence-based postpartum recovery services and professional infant care.According to projections, the market size of postpartum care centers will reach RMB 15 billion in 2019.

How Can St. Bella Win Amidst the Market Turmoil?VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat)Reporters conducted an exclusive interview with Xiang Hua.

Xiang Hua, Founder of Beikang International

Xiang Hua is a distinguished graduate of the Bioengineering program at the University of Oxford. He previously served as a Director in the Investment Banking Division of UBS, where he oversaw healthcare and medical projects in the Asia-Pacific region. His team’s engagements covered nearly all of the leading enterprises in China’s healthcare and medical sectors, including China Resources Medical, Fosun Pharma, Sinopharm, and BGI Genomics.

When asked why he transitioned from the high-paying financial sector to the maternal and infant industry, Xiang Hua revealed that his entrepreneurial inspiration stemmed from his wife’s poor experience during her postpartum confinement: “The postpartum care center we chose was already billed as the best brand in China.” Xiang Hua told the reporter, “Given the industry’s strong prospects, I resolutely resigned from my job, determined to build out the entire maternal and infant supply chain.”

From an investment banking director with an annual salary of one million yuan to a pioneer in the maternal and infant industry, Xiang Hua’s goal is—to transform the service experience across the entire maternal and infant sector.Recognizing the pain women endure during childbirth and drawing on his professional industry insights, he believes that current postpartum care centers in the market lack professionalism and standardization. Therefore, he aims to transform the status quo of the entire postpartum care industry through Saint Bella.

With a background in the financial sector, Xiang Hua possesses professional insights into investment. He has eschewed the prevalent model of large-scale chain postpartum care centers currently dominating the market, insisting instead on operating directly-managed maternal and infant care centers.

“Although there are many franchised postpartum care center brands across China, even those with a scale of over 80 outlets have an unoptimistic profitability ratio, and their franchised locations lack quality assurance. Therefore, we have chosen to seek partners in various cities, while the centers remain under the management of the Saint Bella operational team.”In Xiang Hua’s view, chain-operated postpartum care centers are prone to reputational and risk-related issues, and franchising would make it impossible to guarantee service quality.

In terms of operational investment, in 2016, Saint Bella operated a postpartum care center in Zhuhai, adopting an asset-light model by leasing rooms in a five-star hotel. Around October this year, Saint Bella’s new mother-and-baby postpartum care center, established in partnership with the six-star Park Hyatt Hotel, will open in Hangzhou.

By adopting the model of leasing rooms in five-star hotels, renovation costs are saved, avoiding capital investments that often run into tens of millions.Xiang Hua told reporters, “From a financial perspective, asset-light postpartum care centers have a short payback period, typically achieving break-even within 12 months and delivering returns on investment within two years.”

Currently, the pricing at Saint Bella’s Zhuhai branch ranges from RMB 68,000 to RMB 200,000, positioning it as a premium postpartum care center. Meanwhile, to cater to the mid-range customer segment, Xiang Hua has launched a sub-brand of mid-tier postpartum care centers, with prices ranging from RMB 30,000 to RMB 50,000. He believes: “All consumption habits follow the trend of the high-end leading the mid-range, and the low-end emulating the mid-range. We have launched a mid-range brand to attract consumers who aspire to branded products but have slightly limited purchasing power."The postpartum confinement culture needs to be promoted and quickly influence the young parents of the post-80s generation."

Shengbeila’s service offerings include prenatal care, postpartum maternal care, infant care, postpartum recovery, and early childhood education for newborns. In Xiang Hua’s view, basic confinement services are a standard expectation for Shengbeila or any postpartum care center. “We do not focus on promoting the superiority of our facilities or services; instead, we aim to provide mothers with richer psychological experiences.” This emphasis on “psychological experiences” constitutes Shengbeila’s unique selling point—art therapy.

Currently, 20% of mothers may experience postpartum depression, with a significant proportion of cases occurring during the traditional postpartum confinement period. In response to this statistic, Xiang Hua conceived the idea of using art therapy to alleviate maternal depression.

Unlike traditional prenatal classes, Saint Bella replaces the course format with 24-hour scenario-based immersion.Based on a pre-admission survey of mothers’ interests, curated content tailored to their preferences is selected. During their rest periods, personalized music and recommended artworks are provided for appreciation. Through conversational engagement, contextualized artistic content is subtly integrated to cultivate postpartum women’s artistic sensibilities, while topic-specific content of interest is delivered via subscription-based push notifications.

The art therapy offered by Saint Bella is more akin to a natural way of life,This influence extends beyond the postpartum confinement period, helping mothers cultivate habits related to art and music even after they leave the postpartum care center. Xiang Hua believes, “The post-80s and post-90s generations place exceptionally high expectations on their children, eagerly hoping they will become outstanding individuals with diverse talents. However, upon reflection, many realize that they themselves have limited knowledge in these areas. In reality, a child’s artistic sensibility is often shaped by parental influence and upbringing.”

Saint Bella’s proprietary art therapy program is co-produced with *Harper’s Bazaar Art* magazine. Developed independently in collaboration with the Music Therapy Research Center at Wuhan Conservatory of Music, the program provides multidimensional artistic enrichment tailored to the 28- to 42-day postpartum confinement period.

In the postpartum care center sector, brands are of mixed quality, and the market remains in a phase of unregulated growth. In this industry, the professionalism of caregiving staff is the key to service quality. Traditional confinement nannies, commonly referred to as “Aunties,” are mostly middle-aged women with prior experience in infant care, resembling trained domestic housekeepers rather than medical professionals. By contrast, formal maternal and infant care providers should be registered nurses with medical qualifications. Xiang Hua believes thatThe professionalism of caregivers is a major pain point in the maternal and infant industry.

St. Bella's Star Care Team

To address this industry pain point, Beikang International established the Beikang Education division and founded China’s first professional maternal and infant care academy—Beikang Nursing Academy.

Beikang Nursing Academy is dedicated to training and supplying professional caregivers for maternal and infant care. It recruits qualified nurses from specialized nursing schools and offers courses on personal development, as well as practical training and theoretical instruction in maternal and infant care. After a three-month training period, trainees must complete a six-month internship at the Sheng Bella Maternal and Infant Care Center before they are authorized to provide independent room-based care. As its large-scale teaching system matures, the academy will expand its trainee base and extend services to individual consumers. Postpartum mothers can select nursery nurses trained by the academy to continue providing care in their homes after completing their confinement period.

In terms of talent management, Saint Bella employs an in-house professional nursing team to mitigate safety risks associated with caregivers lacking proper qualifications.“We have established the School of Nursing specifically to train and supply specialized talent. In the future, we will also open our doors to institutions across China in need, allowing them to recruit students from our school.” Xiang Hua believes that nursing education can significantly address issues related to the professional competence of nursing staff.

In addition, Shengbeila has partnered with local hospitals in Zhuhai to establish green channels for diagnosis and treatment, providing expectant mothers with 360-degree safety assurance.

Beikang International focuses on building a maternal and infant ecosystem, using postpartum care centers as an entry point. It collaborates with experts from MIT and Harvard University, plans to establish the Beikang Research Laboratory, and aims to deliver clinical big data on maternal and infant care along with personalized maternal and infant products. Additionally, it provides overseas faculty and a customized curriculum development system for the Beikang Nursing Academy.

Beikang International's Overseas Partners

Regarding the direction of international cooperation, Xiang Hua holds the following vision: “First, I hope that the nursing professionals we train will master the most cutting-edge, advanced, and scientifically rigorous techniques and knowledge from both China and abroad; second, we will introduce outstanding foreign products or those developed by us into the Chinese market.”

In its future development, Beikang International aims to move toward the direction of comprehensive family health management by offering customized care services. By building trust with families through dedicated infant care, the company seeks to provide in-depth, long-term services to entire households. Based on family members’ lifestyle habits, backgrounds, and other factors, Beikang International will deliver all-around, tailor-made service packages designed specifically for each family.

According to Xiang Hua, Beikang International is currently preparing for its first round of financing, which will be used for market expansion across China and the development of its curriculum system in 2017.

Beijing is the third city Xiang Hua is preparing to enter, as the company expects to complete its layout across the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, and North China. “Beikang is not just operating postpartum care centers like Sheng Beila; it is building a comprehensive industrial chain covering the entire maternal and infant sector,” he told reporters.